“When it comes to feeling the love from consumers, Apple remains atop the PC heap, while Detroit is pleasing more customers with its cars, according to the American Customer Satisfaction Index (ACSI), which is being released today,” John Boudreau reports for The Mercury News.
“Apple slipped 1 percent during the past year, but maintained a 12 percent lead over Dell, one of the largest gaps between first and second place for any industry. Dell’s position remained the same, while Acer’s Gateway brand rose 3 percent in consumer satisfaction. Hewlett-Packard inched up 1 percent and its Compaq division jumped 6 percent,” Boudreau reports.
“Overall consumer sentiment of the PC industry nudged up 1 percent after two years of declines, which had been attributed to user problems with the Windows Vista operating system. The uptick is tied to a decision by notebook makers to swap out Vista with the older Windows XP operating system, said David VanAmburg, managing director of the index, which is based on 10,000 random phone interviews and published by the University of Michigan’s Ross School of Business,” Boudreau reports.
MacDailyNews Take: That’s just sad. “WE LOVE OUR ANCIENT EIGHT YEAR-OLD OS (because we’ve never experienced a Mac)!”
Boudreau continues, “He called Apple’s 1 percent drop statistical ‘noise’ that did not mean any shifts in consumer attitudes about the Cupertino-based maker of Macintosh computers, which has enjoyed a large lead over the makers of Windows-based machines for six years. VanAmburg attributed Apple’s long-running success to the quality of its products and the company’s face-to-face interactions with customers through its retail stores.”
MacDailyNews Take: Statistical “noise” that the unscrupulous will nonetheless exploit and trumpet in headlines. We guarandamnteeit.
Full article here.
Erica Ogg reports for CNET, “Apple continues to lead the pack by a mile, with a score of 84. Its next closest competitor, Dell, stands at 75, which was also the average score for all PC makers. HP moved from 73 to 74.”
“With an 11-point [sic] lead, Apple is one of only two companies evaluated by ACSI that dominates its category so totally, according to Claes Fornell, director of the National Quality Research Center at the University of Michigan, which conducts the study,” Ogg reports. “‘It’s unusual in any industry to have a lead like the one Apple has,’ Fornell said.”
His explanation is that compared to others in their respective categories, both are ‘better at marketing what they have to offer to the public,'” Ogg reports.
MacDailyNews Take: True, but that has little or nothing to do with the results. It’s quite simple really: Apple’s Mac offers users significantly superior quality hardware and software. That’s why Apple leads by a mile over the Windows PC box assemblers.
Ogg continues, “That marketing, besides drumming up good feelings in consumers, is also pushing up Apple’s bottom line. The company just recorded its best non-holiday quarter in its history, selling 2.6 million Macs, a 4 percent increase from the same quarter a year ago. PC makers, on average, saw their sales dip 3.1 percent for the same quarter, according to IDC.”
Full article here.
MacDailyNews Take:
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